


aftermath

by mariokartprince (technicalViolist)



Series: the in between [3]
Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Sadstuck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-03-13
Packaged: 2018-09-18 10:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9380657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/technicalViolist/pseuds/mariokartprince
Summary: stories from after the fall.





	1. I. midnight musings

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically a bunch of separate stories from the sad part of the apocalypse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening: All The Little Pieces by Louis XIV

> _there is a hole where your heart_ _(disambiguation: hope, happiness)_ _used to be._

mission time: 11 years

you’re gonna die soon. you can feel it. the fact weighs heavily on your chest, a literal weight that seems to physically drag you down. you don’t tell rose about it, but you don’t really need to. it’s been obvious since day one that this little mission would kill you someday, and both of you are very much overdue for a date with demise.

your movie senses tell you that you should dying via surprise attack any second now, and it’s not exactly helping your anxiety. eliza, an old friend of yours, had turned up dead on your doorstep with three holes in her chest last week. she was your last insider, and now the only intel you and rose have is rumor. you pace the tiny hotel for the 50th time, stress leaking out of your pores. rose stops you on the 51st round, saying, “I don’t believe the owners of this lovely establishment would appreciate it if you wore a literal hole in the floor.”

you stop and glare at her for a second, then continue pacing. “Even if they were around to care, what the fuck am I supposed to do? I can’t just _sit still.”_

she sighs. “Point taken.”

you frown slightly. once, that comment would’ve prompted a solid ten minutes of banter. now? nothing.

 _just another thing this goddamn apocalypse has taken,_ you think bitterly. first, it was your freedom of speech. next, your freedom of movement. for a short period, you couldn’t bear to leave your apartment during the day for fear of being sniped in the middle of the street. that paranoia died down after rose viciously took care of the first shooter to get close to you, but you still worry. you have good reason to. instead of trying to take you and rose out, the batterbitch had then ruined the careers of everyone personally connected to you in an effort to get you, jade, and rose to stand down. it didn’t work, of course, because nothing can (could) stop jade english on a mission, but it did do terrible things to your conscious. after a time, blackballing must’ve gotten boring to )(er, because then s)(e began straight-up kidnapping everyone working against her. you’ve lost count of how many cherished friends you’ll never see again.

at some point, s)(e apparently decided to get petty and go after nearly every contact you’d ever made in the film industry in an effort to drive you out of hiding. lighting techs you’d only ever spoke to in passing went missing, and their families blamed you. oh boy, didn’t _that_ do wonders for your guilt. you drag a hand down your face and sigh deeply. musing on the irrevocable past will get nothing done.

instead of pacing for the 103rd time, you decide to go outside and take a walk after rose assures you that she doesn’t sense any danger coming for at least a week. you take a deep breath of fresh air, ever grateful for what small mercies you can get – sky is clear and beautiful today, and the temperature isn’t completely unreasonable.

you walk laps around the hotel, thoughts chasing themselves in circles. you and rose need to make a move and decide what to do next, before the s)(e decides for you. in the beginning, there was plenty of tasks you could have focused on. countering )(er propaganda, spreading information on the black market, making more coded movies & public announcements, staying out of trouble, the list goes. funny how quickly that list was pared down to a simple _survive._

you are tired of simply _surviving_.

but, then again, perhaps you won’t have to worry about that for too much longer.


	2. II. in the blackest of rooms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> recommended listening: I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab for Cutie

 

> _in your nightmares, she always dies last._

mission time: 11 years

you worst fear is that rose will watch you die.

she’s…well, unstable isn’t a good word to describe it. rose lalonde has a will of iron and would not let a little thing like mental instability get in her way. this is the girl who has faced down assassins and publishing executives with nothing but a rebellious tilt of her chin and a pitch-black smirk. this is the girl who faced the destruction of her world armed with just a pair of sharpened knitting needles and a glare that could cut glass. she regularly communes with eldritch horrors beyond your imagination, and if that can’t make her unstable, nothing will.

perhaps _volatile_ is a better descriptor. rose may always be in complete control of herself, but that just means her incredible rage has a razor-edge focus to it. she will tear down mountains and wreak havoc upon her enemies one minute and smooth out her dress and calmly greet an important dignitary the next. she’ll calmly make tea with one hand and stab someone’s eyes out with the other. one time, you were there as she violently beat the living shit out of a man twice her size that had tried to grab her. when his face was a bloody pulp, she’d turned around, offered her arm to you and said, “After you?” in a calm tone that barely betrayed her anger. you were too shocked to speak.

that might have been the moment you fell in love with her, actually.

she never gives any indication of returning it, but that’s what you get when you love a supernova.

anyway. you digress.

it’s completely inevitable that )(IC will kill both of you one day. the only questions are when, and in what order. she doesn’t say it, but you know she’s thought about former. the latter, however? probably not. you’d like to think you know her well enough to guess that she hasn’t considered that you might be the one to die first. rose is, by far, the more daring of the two of you. she’s the one that does shit like jump off waterfalls without knowing if someone would be there to catch her. (you’re lucky you were.) if someone had told you 10 years ago that you would the voice of reason and caution for rose fuckin’ lalonde, you would have laughed in their face and downed another shot of liquor. she was just so…respectable! ~~~~

nowadays, you have to stop her from carrying out suicide missions.

if you (and her voice of reason) died and she had to watch?

…well, what control she currently has over herself would probably snap in half. you don’t want to think about the kind of carnage she could wreck with those needles of hers if she didn’t control herself as tightly as she does.

you could handle it. if she died, that is. you’ve lost enough people by now to be used to it. sure, her death would feel like a literal hole being carved out of your chest, but you could handle it. you’ve had enough nightmares about it to know precisely what that feels like, both literally and metaphorically. it sucks ass, but you can live with it. you can survive with it.

she can’t.

after losing both her parents at age 15, she developed a diamond-hard outer shell that conceals a sensitive girl deathly afraid of losing those she loves. her solution is normally to block people out to prevent herself from getting attached, but it’s been over 12 years for the two of you. you’re practically married. you don’t know what, exactly, your relationship counts as, but it means quite a bit to both of you. if she lost that…

you don’t want to think about it.

3 months later, as you’re coughing up blood from the sword in your chest, you smile bitterly. your worst fear is that rose will watch you die.

you hadn’t realized that your second worst fear would be watching her die next to you. 


End file.
